A General Sketch of the European War Part 16

TANNENBERG.

The province of East Prussia is of a character peculiar in the German Empire and in Europe.

That character must be grasped if the reader is to understand what fortunes attended the war in this region; for it is a district which in its history, in its political value, and in its geographical arrangements has very powerfully affected the whole of the campaign.

Historically this district is the cradle of that mixed race whose strict, narrow, highly defined, but quite uncreative policy has now piqued, now alarmed, civilized Europe for almost two hundred years.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 72.]

The Prussian, or rather the Prussian aristocracy, which, by achieving the leadership of Germany, has flung so heavy a ma.s.s at Europe, originated in the rough admixture of certain West German and Christian knights with the vague pagan population of the Eastern Baltic plain, which, until almost the close of the Middle Ages, was still a field for missionary effort and for crusade. It was the business of the Teutonic knights to tame this march of Christendom. They accomplished their work almost out of sight of the governing empire, the Papacy, and Christendom in general, with what infamies history records. The district thus occupied was not within the belt of that high Polish culture which is one of the glories of Europe. Nations may not inexactly be divided into those who seek and those who avoid the sea.

The Poles are of the latter type. This belt, therefore, of _Borussia_ (whence our word Prussia is derived)--roughly from the Vistula up on to the Bight of Libau--was held by the Teutonic knights in a sort of savage independence. The Christian faith, which it had been their pretext and at first their motive to spread, took little root; but they did open those avenues whereby the civilization which Germany itself had absorbed from the south and west could filter in; and the northern part of the district, that along the sea (which is the least marshy, and, as that poor country goes, the least barren), was from the close of the Middle Ages German-owned, though for some generations nominally adherent to the Polish crown. The Polish race extended no farther northward in the present province than the lake country of its southern half, and even there suffered an admixture of Lithuanian and German blood.

That lake country well merits a particular description, for its topography has powerfully affected the war in the East; but for the moment we must chiefly grasp the political character following upon the history of this land. The chief n.o.ble of "Borussia," the governing duke, acquired, not from the empire nor perhaps in the eyes of Europe, but from the Polish monarchy, the t.i.tle of king, and it must never be forgotten that the capital at Berlin, and the "Mark"--that is, the frontier march--of Brandenburg, though now the centre, are neither the origins nor the pride of the Hohenzollern power. They were kings of Prussia because Prussia was extraneous to the European system. There came a moment, as I have pointed out in an earlier page in this book, when the Prussian kingship and the electorate of Brandenburg coincided in one person. All men of education know, and all men whatsoever feel, what influence an historical origin will have upon national outlook.

East Prussia, therefore, remains to-day something of a political fetish. Its towns may be called colonies of the Germans, the birthplaces or the residences of men famous in the German story. Its country-sides, although still largely inhabited by a population of servile memories and habits not thoroughly welded with their masters, do not take up great s.p.a.ce in the view the German takes of the region.

He sees rather the German landowner, the German bailiff, the German schoolmaster, and the numerous German tenants of the wealthier type who, though a minority, form the chief part of this social system. We shall see later what this miscalculation cost the great landowners during the Russian invasion, but we must note in pa.s.sing that it is a miscalculation common to every people. Only that which is articulate in the States stands out large in the social perspective during periods of order and of peace.

The Prussian royal house, the Prussian aristocracy, have then for this bastion towards the east an especial regard, which has not been without its sentimental influence upon the course of the war; and that regard is very highly increased by the artificial political boundaries of modern times.

East Prussia is, for the Germans as a whole, their rampart against the Slav; and though, beyond the present purely political and only century-old frontier, a large German-speaking population is to be discovered (especially in the towns under Russian rule), yet such is the influence of a map upon a people essentially bookish in their information, that East Prussia stands to the whole German Empire, as well as to its wealthier inhabitants, for a proof of the German power to withstand the dreaded pressure of the Russian from the East.

It was to be expected, therefore, that two strategical consequences would flow from these non-strategical conditions: first, that the Russians would be tempted--though, no doubt, in very small force for such a secondary operation--to raid a district towards which the enemy's opinion was so sensitive; secondly, that enemy would be tempted, after each such effort, to extend a disproportionate force in ridding the country of such raids.

The Germans, for all the dictates of pure strategics, would hardly hold firm under the news that Slav soldiers were in the farms and country-houses, and were threatening the townsfolk of East Prussia.

The Russians, though no direct advantage was to be gained, and though the bulk of their force must be used elsewhere, would certainly be drawn to move into East Prussia in spite of the known and peculiarly heavy difficulties to an advance which that province presented.

What were those difficulties?

They were of two kinds, the second of which has been, perhaps, unduly emphasized at the expense of the first.

The first was, that the Baltic extreme of this region lay at the very end of the longest possible line the Russians could move on. Even supposing their front extended (as soon it did) from the Carpathians to the sea, this Baltic piece was the end of the line and farthest from their material bases and their sources of equipment. It was badly served with railways, difficult of access from the soil lying to the east, and backed by that spa.r.s.ely inhabited belt of Russian territory in which the modern capital of St. Petersburg has been artificially erected, but which is excentric to the vital process of Russia. As a fact, even after eight months of war, let alone in the first phases which we are here about to describe, the extreme end of this line was not attempted by the Russians at all.

Next to this extreme position, which was the first handicap, comes the region of the lakes, the nature of which was the second handicap.

The Masurian Lake district can best be appreciated by some description of its geology and its landscape. It was probably moulded by the work of ice in the past. Great ma.s.ses of ice have ground out, in their very slow progress towards the sea over the very slight incline northwards of that line, hollows innumerable, and varying from small pools to considerable lakes; the ice has left, upon a background of sand, patches of clay, which hold the waters of all this countryside in brown stretches of shallow mere, and in wider extents of marsh and bog. The rare travellers who explore this confusion of low rounded swells and flats carry back with them to better lands a picture of one grossly monotonous type continuing day upon day. Pine and birch woods, often ordered with the regularity and industry of the German forest organization, but often also straggling and curiously stunted and small, break or confuse the view upon either side.

The impression of the district is most clearly conveyed from some sandy summit, bare of trees, whence a man may overlook, though not from any great height, the desolate landscape for some miles. He obtains from such a view neither the sense of forest which wooded lands of great height convey in spite of their clearings, nor the sense of endless plain which he would find farther to the east or to the north. He perceives through the singularly clear air in autumn brown heaths and plains set here and there with the great stretches of woodland and farmsteads, the stubble of which is soon confused by the eye in the distance with the barren heaths around. In winter, the undulating ma.s.s of deep and even snow is marked everywhere by the small, brown, leafless trees in their great groupings, and by the pines, as small, and weighted with the burden of the weather; but much the most striking of the things seen in such a landscape are the stretches of black water, or, if the season be hard, of black ice which, save when the snow has recently fallen, fierce winds will commonly have swept bare.

The military character of such a region will be clear. It is, in the technical language of military art, a labyrinth of _defiles_. Care has been expended upon the province, especially in the last two generations, and each narrow pa.s.sage between the princ.i.p.al sheets of water carries a road, often a hard causeway. A considerable system of railways takes advantage of the same natural narrow issues; but even to those familiar with the country, the complexity of these narrow dry gates or defiles, and their comparative rarity (contrasted with the vast extent of waterlogged soil or of open pool), render an advance against any opposition perilous, and even an unopposed advance slow, and dependent upon very careful Staff work. Columns in their progress are for hours out of touch one with the other, and an unexpected check in some one narrow must be met by the force there present alone, for it will not be able to obtain immediate reinforcement.

Again, all this line, with its intermixture of sand and clay, which is due to its geological origin, is a collection of traps for any commander who has not thoroughly studied his lines of advance or of retreat--one might almost say for any commander who has not had long personal experience of the place. There will be across one mere a belt of sand or gravel, carrying the heaviest burdens through the shallow water as might a causeway. Its neighbour, with a surface precisely twin, with the same brown water, fringed by the same leaves and dreary stretches of stunted wood, will be deep in mud, but a natural platform may stretch into a lake and fail the column which uses it before the farther sh.o.r.e is reached. In the strongest platforms of this kind gaps of deep clay or mud unexpectedly appear. But even with these deceptions, a column is lucky which has only to deal in its march with open water and firm banks; for the whole place is sown with what were formerly the beds of smaller meres, and are now bogs hardened in places, in others still soft--the two types of soil hardly distinguishable.

During any orderly advance, an army proceeding through the Masurian Lakes will strictly confine itself to the great causeways and to the railway. During any retreat in which it is permitted to observe the same order it will be similarly confined to the only possible issues; but let the retreat be confused, and disaster at once threatens.

A congested column attempting to spread out to the right or to the left will fall into marsh. Guns which it has attempted to save by the crossing of a ford will sooner or later find mud and be abandoned. Men will be drowned in the unexpected deeps, transport embedded and lost; and apart from all this vast wastage, the confusion of units will speedily put such a brake upon the whole process of retirement that envelopment by an enemy who knows the district more thoroughly is hardly to be avoided.

It was this character in the dreary south of East Prussia which was the cause of Tannenberg, and as we read the strategical plan of that disaster, we must keep in mind the view so presented of an empty land, thus treacherous with marsh and reed and scrub and stretches of barren flat, which may be heath, or may be a horse's height and more of slightly covered slime.

The first phase of the business lasts until the 24th of August, beginning with the 7th of that month, and may be very briefly dealt with.

Two Russian armies, numbering altogether perhaps 200,000 men, or at the most a quarter of a million, advanced, the one from the Niemen, the other from the Narew--that is, the one from the east, the other from the south, into East Prussia. The Germans had here reserve troops, in what numbers we do not know, but perhaps half the combined numbers of the Russian invasion, or perhaps a little more. The main shock was taken upon the eastern line of invasion at Gumbinnen; the Germans, defeated there, and threatened by the continued advance of the other army to the west of them, which forbade their retreat westward, fell back in considerable disorder upon Konigsberg, lost ma.s.ses of munitions and guns, and were shut up in that fortress. The defeat at Gumbinnen occupied four days--from the 16th to the 20th of August.

Meanwhile the Russian army which was advancing from the Narew had struck a single German army corps--the 20th--in the neighbourhood of Frankenau. The Russian superiority in numbers was very great; the German army corps was turned and divided. Half of it fled westward, abandoning many guns and munitions; the other half fled north-eastward towards Konigsberg, and the force as a whole disappeared from the field. The Russians pushed their cavalry westward; Allenstein was taken, and by the 25th of August the most advanced patrols of the Russians had almost reached the Vistula.

The necessity for retaking East Prussia by the Germans was a purely political one. The vast crowd of refugees flying westward spread panic within the empire. The personal feeling of the Emperor and of the Prussian aristocracy in the matter of the defeated province was keen.

Had that attempt to retake East Prussia failed, military history would point to it as a capital example of the error of neglecting purely strategical for political considerations. As a fact, it succeeded beyond all expectation, and its success is known as the German victory of Tannenberg.

The nature of this victory may be grasped from the accompanying sketch map.

From the town of Mlawa, just within Russian Poland, beyond the frontier, runs, coming up from Warsaw, a railway to Soldau, just upon the Prussian side of the frontier. At Soldau three railways converge--one from the east, one going west to Niedenberg and the junction of Ortelsberg, a third coming in from the north-east and Eylau.

[Ill.u.s.tration: Sketch 73.]

From Eylau, through Osterode, the main international line runs through Allenstein, and so on eastward, while a branch from this goes through Pa.s.senheim to the junction at Ortelsberg.

Here, then, you have a quadrilateral of railways about fifty miles in length. Within that quadrilateral is extremely bad country--lakes, marshes, and swamps--and the only good roads within it are those marked in single lines upon my sketch--the road from Allenstein through Hohenstein to Niedenberg, and the road from Niedenberg to Pa.s.senheim. As one goes eastwards on that road from Niedenberg to Pa.s.senheim, in the triangle Niedenberg-Pa.s.senheim-Ortelsberg, the country gets worse and worse, and is a perfect labyrinth of marsh, wood, and swamp. The development of the action in such a ground was as follows:--

The Russian commander, Samsonoff, with his army running from Allenstein southwards, was facing towards the west. He had with him perhaps 200,000 men, perhaps a trifle less. His reconnaissance was faulty, partly because the aeroplanes could discover little in that wooded country, partly because the Staff work was imperfect, and his Intelligence Department not well informed by his cavalry patrols. He thought he had against him to the west only weak forces. As a fact, the Germans were sending against him what they themselves admit to be 150,000 men, and what were quite possibly nearer 200,000, for they had drawn largely upon the troops within Germany. They had brought round by sea many of the troops shut up in Konigsberg, and they had brought up the garrisons upon the Vistula. Further, they possessed, drawn from these garrisons, a great superiority in that arm which throughout all the earlier part of the great war was the German stand-by--heavy artillery, and big howitzers capable of use in the field.

On Wednesday, 26th August, Samsonoff first discovered that he had a formidable force in front of him.

It was under the command of von Hindenburg, a man who had studied this district very thoroughly, and who, apart from his advantage in heavy artillery, knew that difficult country infinitely better than his opponents. During the Wednesday, the 26th, Hindenburg stood upon the defensive, Samsonoff attacking him upon the line Allenstein-Soldau. At the end of that defensive, the attack on which was badly hampered in so difficult a country, von Hindenburg ma.s.sed men upon his right near Soldau. This move had two objects: first, by pushing the Russians back there to make them lose the only good road and railway by which they could retire south upon their communications into the country whence they had come; secondly, to make them think, in their natural anxiety for those communications, that his main effort would be delivered there to the south. As a fact, it was his intention to act elsewhere.

But the effect of his pressure along the arrow _a_ was to give the Russian line by the evening of that Wednesday, the 26th of August, the form of the line 1 upon Sketch 73.

The advantage he had thus gained in front of Soldau, Hindenburg maintained by rapid and successful entrenchment; and the next day, Thursday, 27th August, he moved great numbers round by railway to his left near Allenstein, and appeared there with a great local superiority in numbers and in heavy guns. By the evening of that day, then, the 27th, he had got the Russian line into the position 2, and the chief effort was being directed along the arrow _b_. On the 28th and 29th the pressure continued, and increased here upon the north; the Russian right was pushed back upon Pa.s.senheim, for which there was a most furious fight; and by the evening of the 29th Samsonoff's whole body was bent right round into the curve of the line 3, and vigorous blows were being dealt against it along the arrow _c_, which bent it farther and farther in.

It was clearly evident by that evening, the 29th of August, that Samsonoff must retreat; but his opportunities for such a retreat were already difficult. All he had behind him was the worst piece in the whole country--the triangle Pa.s.senheim-Ortelsberg-Niedenberg--and his main avenue of escape was a defile between the lake which the railway at Ortelsberg uses.

His retirement became hopelessly congested. Further pressure along the arrow _d_, during the 30th and 31st, broke that retirement into two halves, one half (as at 5) making off eastwards, the other half (as at 4) bunched together in a hopeless welter in a country where every egress was blocked by swamp and mire, and subjected to the pounding of the now concentrated ring of heavy guns. The body at 5 got away in the course of the 1st and 2nd of September, but only at the expense of leaving behind them great numbers of guns, wounded, and stragglers.

The body at 4 was, in the military sense of the word, "annihilated."

It numbered at least two army corps, or 80,000 men, and of these it is probable that 50,000 fell into the hands of the enemy, wounded and unwounded. The remainder, representing the killed, and the chance units that were able to break out, could hardly have been more than 20,000 to 30,000 men.

Such was the victory of Tannenberg--an immensely successful example of that enveloping movement which the Germans regarded as their peculiar inheritance; a victory in nature recalling Sedan, and upon a scale not inferior to that battle.

The news of that great triumph reached Berlin upon Sedan Day, at the very moment when the corresponding news from the West was that von Kluck had reached the gates of Paris, and had nothing in front of him but the broken and inferior armies of a disastrous defeat.

THE SPIRITS IN CONFLICT.

At this point it is well to pause and consider an element of the vastest consequence to the whole conduct of these great campaigns--I mean the element of German confidence.

Here we have a nation which has received within a fortnight of its initial large operations, within the first five weeks of a war which it had proudly imposed upon its enemies, the news of a victory more startlingly triumphant than its most extreme expectation of success had yet imagined possible.

Let the reader put himself into the position of a German subject in his own station of life, a town dweller, informed as is the English reader by a daily press, which has come to be his sole source of opinion, enjoying or suffering that almost physical self-satisfaction and trust in the future which is, unfortunately, not peculiar to the North German, but common in varying degree to a whole school of morals to-day. Let him remember that this man has been specially tutored and coached into a complete faith in the superiority of himself and his kind over the rest of the human race, and this in a degree superior even to that in which other nations, including our own, have indulged after periods of expanding wealth and population.

Let the reader further remember that in this the Germans' rooted faith their army was for them at once its cause and its expression; then only can he conceive what att.i.tude the mind of such men would a.s.sume upon the news from East and from West during those days--the news of the avalanche in France and the news of Tannenberg. It would seem to the crowd in Berlin during the great festival which marked the time that they were indeed a part of something not only necessarily invincible, but of a different kind in military superiority from other men.

These, from what would seem every quarter of the globe, had been gathered to oppose him, merely because the German had challenged his two princ.i.p.al enemies. Though yet far from being imperilled by so universal a movement, he crushes it utterly, and in a less time than it takes for a great nation to realize that it is under arms, he is overwhelmed by the news not of his enemy's defeat, but rather of his annihilation. Miles of captured guns and hour upon hour of marching columns of prisoners are the visible effect of his triumph and the confirmation of it; and he hears, after the awful noise of his victories, a sort of silence throughout the world--a silence of awe and dread, which proclaims him master. It is the anniversary of Sedan.

I do not set down this psychological phenomenon for the mere pleasure of its description, enormous as that phenomenon is, and worthy of description as it is. I set it down because I think that only in an appreciation of it can one understand the future development of the war. After the Battle of Metz, after the sweep down upon Paris from the Sambre, after this immense achievement of Tannenberg, the millioned opinion of a now united North Germany was fixed. It was so fixed that even a dramatically complete disaster (and the German armies have suffered none) might still leave the North German unshaken in his confidence. Defeats would still seem to him but episodes upon a general background, whose texture was the necessary predominance of his race above the lesser races of the world. This is the mood we shall discover in all that Germany does from that moment forward. It is of the first importance to realize it, because that mood is, so to speak, the chemical basis of all the reactions that follow. That mood, disappointed, breeds fury and confusion; in the event of further slight successes, it breeds a vast exaggeration of such success; in the presence of any real though but local advance, it breeds the illusion of a final victory.